Saturday, August 20, 2005

Good Night, Sweet Prince

"We were a half hour out of Barstow when the drugs kicked in. I remember saying something like, "I feel a little light headed, maybe you should drive...", when all of the sudden there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. I aimed the Great White Shark into the ditch, and my attorney started screaming, "What the fuck are you doing?" I didn't tell him about the bats. Poor fucker would be seeing them soon enough..."

-First paragraph, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson

It does my heart good to see Hunter Thompson's name in the paper, even if it is talking about his upcoming wake, King of gonzo blasts off one last time . When he was found dead in his home in February it was as if the the world had become stone cold sober in an instant.

I still have difficulty believing it was a suicide. Paranoid or not; shortly after I stopped believing in Santa Claus, I stopped believing in the quiet suicides and accidental small plane crashes of outspoken people. Especially so with the moves of the powerful in the last few years and some of the last things he had to say about those in power. This passage from the October Rolling Stone, a few months before his death describes Bush's ascension to the throne in fairly accurate and unflattering terms,

It was the most brutal seizure of power since Hitler burned the German Reichstag in 1933 and declared himself the new Boss of Germany. Karl Rove is no stranger to Nazi strategy, if only because it worked, for a while, and it was sure as hell fun for Hitler. But not for long. He ran out of oil, the whole world hated him, and he liked to gobble pure crystal biphetamine and stay awake for eight or nine days in a row with his maps & his bombers & his dope-addled general staff.

But the spirit of Gonzo is alive and well in Woody Creek as Thompson's widow and friends prepare to blast Thompson's ashes to kingdom come.

Thompson's ashes have been packed into firework casings and will be dispersed today from 34 different shells fired from a gun barrel mounted on top of a 150-foot high monument.The monument, in the form of a clenched fist made symmetrical by the addition of a second thumb, is modeled on Thompson's gonzo logo.

But the ashes ceremony isn't the only sign of Gonzo around the old ranch. Thompson's neighbors have continued where he left off, to the extent of chasing away photographers with shotguns,

"He was in no danger," Ibbotson told the Aspen Times. "But he won't come back, you can be sure of that. I wasn't aiming at him, I just wanted to scare his ass. I don't want him coming back here during the event. If you want to print the fact that neighbours are shooting at paparazzi, please do. It might save us a little hassle on the day of the event."

So hooray for Hunter who, from beyond the grave, continues to reach up and claw out the eyeballs' of the Greedheads, and raise a fist of defiance for the Doomed...